Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches

25. Jazz Dance Training via Private Studios, Competitions, and Conventions

25 Jazz Dance Training via Private Studios, Competitions, and Conventions Lindsay Guarino Today’s dance studios offer a wide range of opportunities to those who wish to train as jazz dancers. Studios vary with respect to the size of the student body, the size of the facilities, the experience of the faculty, the range of class offerings, the number of performance opportunities, whether they are profit or nonprofit organizations, competition studios or conservatories, and recreational or professional. Most privately owned dance studios that train young children through young adults offer jazz dance classes. From a business perspective it is necessary to do so; jazz dance is a popular style of dance desired by prospective clients. When observing jazz dance training today in privately owned dance studios, it is apparent that there is no greater variable than the decision to, or not to, attend dance competitions and conventions. Taking a closer look at dance studios, including their relationship with dance competitions and conventions, may help to reveal how studio owners choose to train their dancers and what kinds of factors inform their decisions. Privately Owned Dance Studios Dance studios are businesses, and regardless of their artistic vision, they operate with the underlying intention of making money. Some studios combine advertising and marketing to lure clients, possibly masking their insufficient qualifications. There are successful dance studios that are staffed by less than qualified instructors, with no formal education or experience beyond the studio at which they trained. On the other hand, there exist highly qualified 197 studios run by faculty who are well versed in the field of dance and have pursued a professional career as a performer, a college degree in dance, or continued their personal growth and training through certification programs such as Dance Masters of America or the National Dance Educators Organization . Qualifications aside, enticements such as glossy ads, studio windows full of trophies, frilly costumes, fancy recital locations, family-oriented atmospheres , and free classes can draw clients in with ease. Artistry frequently takes a backseat in order to illuminate what “sells.” Dance studios typically fall into two major categories: those who compete and those who do not. Dance competitions have had an increasing influence on the way jazz dancers are trained. In recent years, dance has reintegrated into popular culture, and America’s perception of dance is largely influenced by television shows such as So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars. While these programs acknowledge artistry, they are competitive in nature, and their presence alone blurs the line between dance as art and dance as a sport. Young dancers today often want to train at competitive studios, and because of this, studio owners are increasingly inclined to bring their students to competitions in order to maintain and increase their clientele. Dance Competitions and Conventions Jazz dance has always been competitive in nature. From the Savoy Ballroom to the streets of New York City, dancers have competed in social and professional settings to earn the respect and admiration of peers. It has not been until more recent years, however, that touring competition venues have been established and, as such, defined the way that dancers today train and understand dance. Today’s dance competitions function as traveling circuits in which the faculty hold weekend competitions in cities across the nation. Dance studios pay a fee to have their works adjudicated, and they enter their studio’s routines in a category specific to the choreographic style and age and/or level of the dancers performing. The highest scoring dances within each category are then awarded medals, ribbons, trophies, or cash prizes. Additionally, most competitions now offer recorded feedback to the dancers, where the judges comment on all aspects of the routines, from the choreography to the technique and precision of the dancers. Many competitions select dancers from each city to go on and compete at a national level, which typically takes place in a select city over the summer months (some competitions have more than one national final so they offer more than one location). Prizes for winning at the national level are larger in scale and more prestigious than at the local 198 · Lindsay Guarino level, and dancers who win national titles are treated like celebrities within that competition circuit.1 Some competitions have a convention that runs parallel to the competition , and there are also conventions that function independently. Like competitions , dance conventions...